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1
The Structure of Search Engine Law
James Grimmelmann
*
I
NTRODUCTION
........................................................................................... 3
I.
S
EARCH
E
NGINE
T
ECHNOLOGY AND
B
USINESS
........................................... 6
A.
T
ECHNOLOGY
....................................................................................... 7
1.
Indexing ....................................................................................... 7
2.
Queries ......................................................................................... 8
3.
Results .......................................................................................... 9
4.
Content ...................................................................................... 11
B.
B
USINESS
............................................................................................ 11
II.
T
HE
S
TRUCTURE OF
S
EARCH
E
NGINE
L
AW
............................................... 15
A.
U
SERS
’
I
NTERESTS
............................................................................... 17
1.
Query Privacy ............................................................................. 17
2.
Unbiased Results ....................................................................... 20
B.
P
ROVIDERS
’
I
NTERESTS
........................................................................ 24
1.
Minimizing Costs ....................................................................... 24
2.
Avoiding Unfair Competition .................................................. 27
3.
Prominent Placement in Results .............................................. 31
C.
T
HIRD
P
ARTIES
’
I
NTERESTS
................................................................. 33
1.
Ownership.................................................................................. 33
2.
Reputation ................................................................................. 36
3.
Privacy ........................................................................................ 39
4.
User Virtue ................................................................................. 41
D.
S
EARCH
E
NGINES
’
I
NTERESTS
............................................................... 44
1.
Preventing Search Engine Optimization ................................. 44
2. Preventing Click Fraud ............................................................. 46
* Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School. My thanks for their comments to Jack Balkin, Yochai Benkler, Shyam Balganesh, Aislinn Black, Michael Carroll, Eric Goldman, Anne Huang, Dan Hunter, David Johnson, Thomas Lee, Beth Noveck, Frank Pasquale, Guy Pessach, Chris Riley, Steven Wu, Tal Zarsky, and the participants in the workshops where Ipresented earlier versions of this Article. After June 1, 2008, this Article is available for reuseunder the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/. All otherwise-undated web sites in footnotes werelast visited on August 28, 2007.
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IOWA LAW REVIEW
[2007]
3.
Innovation.................................................................................. 48
4.
Competition ............................................................................... 50
III.
I
NTERCONNECTIONS IN
S
EARCH
E
NGINE
L
AW
.......................................... 51
A.
C
LAIMS
A
GAINST
S
EARCH
E
NGINES AS
F
UNCTIONAL
S
UBSTITUTES
......... 52
B.
T
HE
P
ROS AND
C
ONS OF
D
ISCLOSURE AND
M
ANDATED
R
ESULTS
............ 54
C.
U
SER
P
RIVACY
C
ONCERNS
I
MPLICATE
O
THERS
’
I
NTERESTS
.................... 56
D.
S
EARCH
E
NGINE
R
ESULTS AS
S
PEECH
.................................................... 58
E.
T
RADEMARKS AND
S
EARCH
E
NGINES IN
C
ONTEXT
................................. 60
V.
C
ONCLUSION
............................................................................................ 62
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THE STRUCTURE OF SEARCH ENGINE LAW
3
I
NTRODUCTION
Search engines are the new linchpins of the Internet.
1
A large andgrowing fraction of the Internet’s immense volume of traffic flows throughthem. They are librarians, who bring order to the chaotic onlineaccumulation of information. They are messengers, who bring writers andreaders together. They are critics, who elevate content to prominence orconsign it to obscurity. They are inventors, who devise new technologies andbusiness models to remake the Internet. And they are spies, who are askedto carry out investigations with dispatch and discretion.
2
Lawyers and the law have taken notice of search engines. Governmentsaround the world are casting an increasingly skeptical eye on search engines,questioning whether their actions have always been in the interests of society. More and more parties are presenting themselves at the courthousedoor with plausible stories of how they have been injured by search engines.Only a few foresighted legal scholars have recognized the growingimportance of search engines.
3
1
. See generally
J
OHN
B
ATTELLE
,
T
HE
S
EARCH
:
H
OW
G
OOGLE AND
I
TS
R
IVALS
R
EWROTE THE
R
ULES OF
B
USINESS AND
T
RANSFORMED
O
UR
C
ULTURE
(2005) (describing the history andsignificance of Internet search); J
EAN
-N
OËL
J
EANNENEY
,
G
OOGLE AND THE
M
YTH OF
U
NIVERSAL
K
NOWLEDGE
(Teresa Lavender Fagan trans., 2007) (discussing the implications of search forEuropean cultural heritage); D
AVID
A.
V
ISE
&
M
ARK
M
ALSEED
,
T
HE
G
OOGLE
S
TORY
(2005)(describing Google’s history); I
AN
H.
W
ITTEN ET AL
.,
W
EB
D
RAGONS
:
I
NSIDE THE
M
YTHS OF
S
EARCH
E
NGINE
T
ECHNOLOGY
(2007) (analyzing the role of search engines as the gatekeepers of information on the web).2
. See, e.g.
, R. Scott Rappold,
Bumbling Bigg City Burglars Got $12K
, C
OLO
.
S
PRINGS
G
AZETTE
, July 10, 2007,
available at
http://www.gazette.com/articles/safes_24620___article.html/ackerman_google.html (describing criminals who Googled for “how to crack a safe” froma computer at the office they were burglarizing).3. Many scholars have written about one legal controversy or another that involves asearch engine. Fewer have linked the multiple, interconnected problems that search enginesraise. The essential articles are Niva Elkin-Koren,
Let the Crawlers Crawl: On Virtual Gatekeepers and the Right to Exclude Indexing
, 26 D
AYTON
L.
R
EV
. 179 (2001); Urs Gasser,
Regulating Search Engines: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead
, 9 Y
ALE
J.L.
&
T
ECH
.
201
(2006),
available at
http://www. yjolt.org/old/files/20052006Issue/Spring06-gasser.pdf;
Eric Goldman,
Search Engine Bias and the Demise of Search Engine Utopianism
, 9 Y
ALE
J.L.
&
T
ECH
.
188
(2006),
available at
http://www.yjolt.org/old/files/20052006Issue/spring06-goldman.pdf;
Lucas Introna & HelenNissenbaum,
Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters
, 16
I
NFO
.
S
OC
’
Y
169 (2000);
Frank Pasquale,
Rankings, Reductionism, and Responsibility
, 54 C
LEV
.
S
T
.
L.
R
EV
.
115
(2006);
andFrank Pasquale & Oren Bracha,
Federal Search Commission? Access, Fairness, and Accountability in the Law of Search
(2007),
available at
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1002453. Two unpublished thesesalso take a usefully broad view of search.
See
Michael Zimmer, The Quest for the Perfect SearchEngine: Values, Technical Design, and the Flow of Personal Information in Spheres of Mobility (2007) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, New York University) (on file with the Iowa LawReview); Alejandro M. Diaz, Through the Google Goggles: Sociopolitical Bias in Search EngineDesign (2005) (unpublished master’s thesis),
available at
http://epl.scu.edu:16080/~stsvalues/readings /Diaz_thesis_final.pdf. Joshua A.T. Fairfield’s
The Search Interest in Contract
,92 I
OWA
L.
R
EV
.
1237 (2007), is, one may hope, the first of a wave of scholarly attention to the
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